Charon, in Greek mythology, the son of Erebus and Nyx (Night), whose duty it was to ferry over the Rivers Styx and Acheron those souls of the deceased who had received the rites of burial. In payment he received the coin that was placed in the mouth of the corpse. In art, where he was first depicted in an Attic vase dating from about 500 bce, Charon was represented as a morose and grisly old man. Charon appears in Aristophanes’ comedy Frogs (406 bce); Virgil portrayed him in Aeneid, Book VI (1st century bce); and he is a common character in the dialogues of Lucian (2nd century ce). In Etruscan mythology he was known as Charun and appeared as a death demon, armed with a hammer. Eventually he came to be regarded as the image of death and of the world below. As such he survives in Charos, or Charontas, the angel of death in modern Greek folklore.

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...the living from that of the dead also occurs in many religions: the Greeks and Romans believed that the dead were ferried across an infernal river, the Acheron or Styx, by a demonic boatman called Charon, for whose payment a coin was placed in the mouth of the deceased; in Zoroastrianism the dead cross the Bridge of the Requiter (Činvato Paratu); bridges figure also in Muslim and...

...in order to enable them to speak. They were conducted, it was believed, to the realm of Hades by Hermes; but the way was barred, according to popular accounts, by the marshy river Styx. Across this, Charon ferried all who had received at least token burial, and coins were placed in the mouths of corpses to pay the fare.

...with bestial features) and sileni (old and drunken folk deities) were the nymphs’ male counterparts. Like sea deities, sileni possessed secret knowledge that they would reveal only under duress. Charon, the grisly ferryman of the dead, was also a popular figure of folktale.